


To Tell Stories

by AuditoryCheesecake



Series: A Cheesecake's Tumblr Shorts [34]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Death Tag for Molly and Zuala, Flowers, Just some speculation into Yasha's book, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 18:37:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17106002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuditoryCheesecake/pseuds/AuditoryCheesecake
Summary: Yasha keeps flowers for a reason.





	To Tell Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Updated with the correct spelling of Zuala's name!

Yasha doesn’t need to know how to read to know how important the book is. Molly gave it to her. He couldn’t really read either, but they didn’t need it for that. 

He gave her gifts a lot. She would leave and then come back, and he’d give her a piece of bread from his plate or a blanket to sleep under. He gave her the book. He gave her the clover. “For luck,” he said, and he said so little, she had to keep them.

“Zuala,” she whispered into the pages. “My wife. I’ve found a friend. I want you to meet him. You would like him. He is quiet like me.”

Molly got less quiet, but she still liked him. He grew like the flowers on the roadside, the little yellow ones that turned to stars: bright and colorful and bursting everywhere. She pressed one between the pages, staining them green at the stem and yellow at the blossom. That one never took its last step, never curled into itself and blew away while she wasn’t watching.

Nott gave her flowers for her book. Jester helped her braid some into her hair, and when they started to fall out, she put them in her book as well. Flowers from the forest, from the beach, from the gardens and alleys of cities. Flowers from Zadash, from Nicodranas, from Darktow, so she could turn the pages back and see where she’d been.

“Your book is about laws,” Caleb told her one day. “Very old ones.”

“I don’t know what the words are. They’re just sort of in there. They’re not for me. My book is about flowers.” She opened it to the little white ones Nott had given her. “When I put the flowers in, they turn into stories. Like when you write in your book and the words are more than shapes.”

His eyes saw somewhere else while he thought. “Ja. It is like that. Are the stories for you?”

She closed the book and touched the front. The first time she saw flowers, she hadn’t understood them. They seemed so beautiful and breakable. Zuala had been strong. Zuala had been beautiful. Zuala would have loved flowers, and the ocean, and the fields of grass, and the Mighty Nein. “No.”


End file.
